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Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
MVM
join:2001-01-03
Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
Linksys WRT54G v4

Bill_MI

MVM

The Letter About The Outage

Just got the letter from Mark Dineen, Senior Vice President and General Manager WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone. I'm sure everyone in the area, not opted out, got the same.

I was impressed he would actually describe the cause of the outage last Friday, albeit phrased for the non-techy. When I tell others how I like WOW I usually say: "It's not like the old mom-n-pop ISPs but a heck of a lot closer than the alternative."

I'm sure some are still fuming but I'll remain impressed.
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

Care to share?

Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
MVM
join:2001-01-03
Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
Linksys WRT54G v4

Bill_MI

MVM

Sure...

Subject: Interruption to Service
From: Mark@localhost.wowwayinfo.com, Dineen@localhost.wowwayinfo.com,
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:38:59 -0400

Dear Customers,

If you were home on the evening of Thursday, June 21st or Saturday, June 23rd you most likely experienced problems with your WOW! service. First and foremost, I want to apologize for the interruption and any inconvenience we caused you or your family. I was also impacted at my home and fully appreciate your difficulty in communicating with your world. Although this type of occurrence is rare, we take them very personally and therefore do everything possible to prevent them in the first place. We are also not perfect and as a valued customer you deserve to know what happened.

The cause of the outage is a very complicated issue and one that IT professionals could appreciate but most of us don’t understand. I will try to make it simple. New equipment was recently installed on our main fiber optic network that supports all of metro Detroit to support the growing data traffic that flows from businesses. The new equipment sent unexpected and unnecessary data onto the network and overloaded the processing capacity. The only analogy I can draw for you is what happens with rush hour traffic right here in the Motor City. Hundreds of thousands of cars flood the freeway in a short period of time and causes traffic to crawl. Eventually there is an accident as cars attempt to jockey for a better position and traffic stops. In our case, data represents the cars and our fiber network is the freeway. The data traffic was unexpected and the new equipment was tested and used in other parts of our company for several years. So unlike rush hour, the impact was not predictable. During this time, if you attempted to call us I don’t have to tell you it was difficult if not impossible to reach us.

Our team jumped into action and began working with equipment vendors to solve the problem. Our internal team implemented a filtering solution that prevents any unnecessary data from passing onto our fiber freeway. As of Sunday, the issue is solved and data continues to flow properly throughout our network. Our Network Operations Center monitors our network 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we are committed to offering you a service that lives up to our name.

Again, thank you for your business. I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July week.

Respectfully,

Mark Dineen
Senior Vice President and General Manager
WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone


adam9280
join:2005-01-02
Rochester, MI

adam9280 to Bill_MI

Member

to Bill_MI
I was just about to post the email I received. I was very impressed with the email too. Just another reason I have no plans to change providers.
NuclearXP9
join:2012-04-12
Trenton, MI

NuclearXP9 to Bill_MI

Member

to Bill_MI
This is meaningless to me. No offer to discount my bill. Actions speak louder than words. These cable companies accept no responsibility for offering seamless service to customers yet they expect a bill paid in full every month. I have my eyes on two other cable/internet providers based on quality of service, as the features/price of WOW Ultra TV are falling in priority versus having a consistent level of service.
AaronKinder
join:2005-01-26
Lincoln Park, MI

AaronKinder

Member

I agree with you NuclearXP. That "letter" should have been posted here by someone like WOW_Dan instead it was sent out as an after thought. No doubt because of the members on this forum wanted a reason. Communication needs to be worked on if you ask me.

I can only speak for myself and have already ordered the switch back to Comcast. Cable tv in my house hasn't functioned right since the outage, the internet seems ok but I am done for at least 6 months time. Wow seems to be positioning itself as a discount ISP or bargain basement if you will. They used to be much more well rounded.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

smunro622 to Bill_MI

Premium Member

to Bill_MI
I agree WOW_DAN should of posted this as he is the face/voice WOW in this forum. It kinda leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, this and ultra tv is going to leave my house as the gateway is a huge piece of garbage.

SHoTTa35
@optonline.net

SHoTTa35 to NuclearXP9

Anon

to NuclearXP9
Since you didn't sign a SLA then I guess there is no guarantee of 100% uptime. Even when you do they only say 99.99% And if they break it then they'll owe you either free services or a big cash payment. You certainly wouldn't get that sorta service for $50/month though.

I guess throwing you a courtesy discount would have went over nicer but then again it doesn't say in the TOS also that they have to notifiy you of what's going on the network or send emails if a major disruption should occur. If they had given $5 discount then people would be saying "Oh $5 that's it? I want the whole month credit because of this inconvenience"

How long was it down for? 12hrs? 24hrs? I'll just say 24hrs to make it easy. For the "average" plan of 15Mbps at $50/month (standard pricing, not bundles which are even cheaper) they would owe you $1.66 cents for the month of June. I'm sure the CEO can afford to take that out of his own paycheck to give it back to customers but then they'd bitch and moan about it even more!

So consider the time and effort taken to prepare and send this email. Your internet wasn't 100% for "2 days". Even took the time to word it in "normal" words and found a perfect metaphor for it. Even on a business connection things can go wrong at anypoint for any reason. I hear about it all day at my job!

aes128
join:2003-12-19
Warren, MI

aes128

Member

I guess I do not understand the "outrage" over this and why some people would not have gotten this letter. Did you not get it if you never created any WOW email addresses? I got the letter.

As someone who works in a BIG NOC (Network Operations Center) as I have said in another post, stuff happens. It is never ever going to be 100% all the time, cannot do it, stuff happens.

As for me I lost a few TV channels for a bit, big deal (internet never went down). I should now want WOW to refund what? Loss of a few channels for a day? 1$ perhaps 2$. I mean big deal. This is not normal WOW operations and I am willing to cut them some slack here.
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

said by aes128:

This is not normal WOW operations and I am willing to cut them some slack here.

+10.

a) it's only TV

b) if you don't have it in you to be more forgiving to a company for which this behavior is absolutely the rare exception, a company that has proven its dedication to its customers time and again (ESPECIALLY compared to the T-W/Comcast/Cox big boys), then maybe WOW doesn't want or need you as a customer.
Matt7
join:2001-01-02
Columbus, OH

Matt7 to smunro622

Member

to smunro622
said by smunro622:

I agree WOW_DAN should of posted this as he is the face/voice WOW in this forum. It kinda leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, this and ultra tv is going to leave my house as the gateway is a huge piece of garbage.

I disagree.. It's not WOW_DAN's job to be PR person... and besides as someone else states.. There is really no SLA agreement for your "residential service" .. I am pretty sure the Terms of service (no one ever reads) states that WOW is not accountable for outages etc.

Just_Dan
Premium Member
join:2011-03-24
Denver, CO

Just_Dan

Premium Member

I'm sorry I wasn't able to give more detail, but my presence here is from a technical support standpoint only. I'm not able to give detailed information about events like this without approval from my superiors. I was aware there was something in the works for this (the letter you received) so I was waiting for them to handle explaining the situation.

aes128
join:2003-12-19
Warren, MI

aes128

Member

As a side note about "stuff happens in IT"...

Got called today at 3:30AM about an outage in a VPN firewall that connects some of our suppliers to us. 6 hours later and 4 hours of conference call with the firewall vendor on the phone I say well reboot it. I reboot, all is fixed. What happened??? Who knows.

This was a pair of $6K firewalls and this should not have happened. No changes were made, they just got confused.

Bottom line is it was a master/slave pair to minimize outages and we changed nothing but still it happened.

smunro622
Premium Member
join:2006-02-15
united state

smunro622 to Bill_MI

Premium Member

to Bill_MI
i agree things happen i get home to day and have work to do, internet is slow and i call WOW and i am greeted with if you are getting this message we are aware of the outage and are working on the issue... What is going on with WOW?
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

Just to put some perspective on things here:

for the second time in six years, we experienced the storm of the century. Power will be out for 5-7 days according to AEP, just like last time. (I have a generator and a tethered cell phone here.) But unlike last time, when it was a nice mild week in September, we are starting the 93 degree, humid days of July.

No power, no internet, my cell service is spotty (Sprint), gawdawful heat and humidity.

For those of you *able* to kick back in your A/C house with a cold drink and enjoy at least cable TV and/or a DVD, and some level of broadband, I have no sympathy.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled first world problems.

boop
@myvzw.com

boop

Anon

Haha... i'm in pickerington. A/c has been on the fritz since thursday, then this storm hits. I actually still have power. flickered on and off a bit but my power grid is ridiculous - never have outages when others around here do somehow - have friends not even a half mile down the street currently without power. But i guess my node is in that area or something because unfortunately i'm without my tv/internet/phone. Been out since the storm came through. So in summary, no internet, no tv, no a/c... might as well have no power.

highfigh
@myvzw.com

highfigh

Anon

I am truly amazed that folks here can complain about losing service for a day or two! And to blame Dan for not tickling your ears with some explanation? Like that would make it all better somehow? Perhaps this is why the company chose their name, WOW! ' because of customers like you.

Besides, why not use your dvr? Doesn't the new one have 6 tuners and a couple TB of drives? Then chill out and catch up on your recordings.
Matt7
join:2001-01-02
Columbus, OH

Matt7 to adam1991

Member

to adam1991
said by adam1991:

Just to put some perspective on things here:

for the second time in six years, we experienced the storm of the century. Power will be out for 5-7 days according to AEP, just like last time. (I have a generator and a tethered cell phone here.) But unlike last time, when it was a nice mild week in September, we are starting the 93 degree, humid days of July.

No power, no internet, my cell service is spotty (Sprint), gawdawful heat and humidity.

Yeah 190,000 people without power still in Franklin County (columbus) btw.. I did see some WOW Trucks out so they are working on their plant just like AEP is working on theirs.
adam1991
join:2012-06-16
united state

adam1991

Member

A 50 ft tree across the street broke off at ground level and fell straight across the street, with the top of the tree in the middle of my front yard. Whole street is blocked. My only entertainment is watching idiot drivers careen up the street at extralegal speeds, not paying any attention, unable to process that big thing in the middle of the road until they're about 10 feet from it. I'm waiting for someone to wreck his car.

Either that, or the people who crawl up to it, hoping it will disappear for them.

Then there are the ones who simply drive up onto the front yard across the street and drive behind the bottom end of the tree--because after all, they're *entitled* to keep going. Some of the neighbors have put an active stop to that...

Down the way, a large tree limb fell onto a main wire along High St, which triggered a big chain reaction along a whole row of transformers--it was like watching fireworks go off. THAT'S gonna leave a mark. What it did was snap a pole in two, and that'll take more than an hour to fix for sure.

Yeah. It's getting hotter as I type this, listening to the generator go. AEP promised a 10am update, but all we have so far is a cheesy "outage map". Yeah, I get it--a third of the county is out of power. Thanks.
boopin
join:2011-08-25
Pickerington, OH

boopin to Bill_MI

Member

to Bill_MI
Welp, I posted as boop from my phone but now have cable back. Still no a/c though. Haven't had it since Wednesday and it's not going to be fixed now until Monday. At least I have internet now to keep my mind off the boiling of myself.

troubleagain
@wideopenwest.com

troubleagain

Anon

said by boopin:

Still no a/c though. Haven't had it since Wednesday and it's not going to be fixed now until Monday.

Unless it's a newer unit (probably not) it's going to cost a lot more to fix, assuming it needs freon. Seems like a racket for sure.

»news.yahoo.com/blogs/loo ··· 745.html
boopin
join:2011-08-25
Pickerington, OH

boopin

Member

said by troubleagain :

said by boopin:

Still no a/c though. Haven't had it since Wednesday and it's not going to be fixed now until Monday.

Unless it's a newer unit (probably not) it's going to cost a lot more to fix, assuming it needs freon. Seems like a racket for sure.

»news.yahoo.com/blogs/loo ··· 745.html

Nah, all the work being done now is free because I had them come out to replace a warrantied part on Thursday (evaporator coil) and they put a bad one in they decided this morning and can't get another new one in until Monday. Just replaced the whole system a little less than 5 years ago and it had a 5 year warranty so I got real lucky...lol.
NuclearXP9
join:2012-04-12
Trenton, MI

NuclearXP9 to aes128

Member

to aes128
I disagree on a few fronts here. First redundant highly available networks are absolutely possible and expected of an ISP. Just because your employer doesn't implement them or you don't understand the architecture doesn't mean its not possible. What I think you meant to say is it isn't possible for WOW to do so at the operational cost it has allocated.

As for the outrage, this is a bit of an overstatement. My point of desiring compensation from the outage is that the concept of crediting customers for outages puts pressure on them to provide better service. The fact that they hide behind the lack of SLAs is a cop out and would never fly in an enterprise contract. How about I give WOW a "best effort" to pay my whole bill each month?

getrealollie
@wideopenwest.com

getrealollie

Anon

Were not talking enterprise, were talking residential. Of course there going to be different. lol. Shit does happen and not every network is perfect and if you think it is then there is nothing more to say to you after this post. If you think no other company has outages then your living in a dream world pal.

Now sure you should be compensated but to what extent? People always over do it and think the whole month should be free or some type of huge discount, when in reality it should on be a few dollars at most if the outage wasnt a full 24 hours. And if you need it for business then get a business account.